I have been creating these circular mandalas from photographs, and recently had an epiphany… Why don’t I bring the imagery from Photoshop into Illustrator and dress it up a bit with some graphic design? Not sure why I just thought of this, but I’m glad I did. This is my first trial at the combination.

As I continue to blend photography with geometry, I wanted to share some progress. I am creating a series of Photoshop Actions to assist me in turning photographs into patterns. I use Adobe Illustrator to calculate the precise geometry, then Adobe Photoshop to crop images into triangles and rotate them around a single point until they create a seamless tessellated pattern.

Here are some visual examples. I began with a photograph of textures in the sand at the beach near my house. First is 4 triangles, then 6. The more sides it has, the less of the original photograph is visible, however more repetitious detail is relieved. After creating 100 sides, someone challenged me to go farther, so I developed a process that splits and image SO thin that all you get are pixels of color going around in a circle. I call it “Infinity”.

Abstract painting? Wait, those are pixels!… I am always trying to find new ways to use (and abuse) Adobe Photoshop. I recently developed a process where I distort a photograph into itself multiple times in multiple directions. I distort a photograph into itself multiple times in multiple directions.

Many are complete failures, but once in a while one turns out looking like a beautiful, emotional abstract painting (a category of art that I love). Using this process I can create organic and complex backgrounds and textures… These were two photographs of flowers.

The best part of having multiple interests is finding ways to combine them. As a graphic designer I love working with vectors in Adobe Illustrator, but what about my passion for photography? Thankfully, in the digital world, everything can coexists in one way or another.

I photographed an interesting looking tree and converted it to vectors in Illustrator. I then cleaned it up, modified parts, added a swing, then designed an entire scene surrounding it… It’s nice knowing that that creativity has no bounds.